Why We Fight
by sna
Summary: A series of shorts on why our ninjas... are ninjas. Spoilers some of them up to recent manga. I'll put an asterix in the chapter title when there is one so you can pick and choose. Multipart fic. Many shorts.
1. Ino

Why We Fight: Ino

A series of shorts on why our ninjas... are ninjas. Spoilers some of them up to recent manga. I'll put an asterix (or something)in the chapter title when there is one so you can pick and choose. Multi-part fic. Many shorts.

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Ino fights because its a family tradition. Her father hadn't wanted her to become a professional ninja but she was (not to be cute) pig-headed and she got her own way. She was glad of the opposition actually, it made her feel she was doing the right thing because you don't derserve anything unless you fight for it. That's a philosophy Ino's never given up on, one that defines who she is and who she'll become and she's proud to hold it in her heart.

It's the semi-finals of the Chuunin exam and she and Sakura are fighting with all they have to prove that they deserve to fight at all. There's blood on both their faces, and a grin there too because this is how its meant to be. This is how Ino knows she'll earn the right to be everything she wants to be in her life: a ninja, a friend, a rival, a winner. She's already learned so much about Sakura in this fight, seen so much of what she helped this pink-haired little flower become, and she's amazed and daunted and more than anything she's realizing she's proud.

Ino and Sakura have been fighting for almost two years, and look at what they've managed to become. Look how far they've come and how far they have to go. This is perfect, this is everything and this is the life Ino knows she's meant to lead. She raises her fist and races forward and Sakura does the same; they lash out in that final strike and she realizes she's fighting for her friendship with the other girl and she knows she's always been right.

As the blows connect Ino sees stars and counts all of them as battles she's fighting and has every intention of winning. She sees herself racing out to fight for Team 7 in the Forest of Death because she doesn't deserve commrades if she isn't strong enough to fight for them no matter the risk. She remembers all the times she's fought for Shikamaru and Chouji (sometimes against herself) because the three of them are tied together by destiny and she knows it, and she doesn't deserve a destiny if she isn't willing to fight for it. She knows she'll always fight for Asuma-sensei because if she deserves to inherit some of his strength (alright, alright he's got _some_ redeeming qualities) she'd better prove she's as fearless as he is and fight for it.

Her head hits the ground after her shoulders and the pain just makes the stars brighter. Right before everything goes black she sees Sakura hit the ground at the same moment, and Chouji and Shikamaru watching her with wide eyes, and Asuma-sensei grinning at her and she's never felt better in her life.

Ino fights because that's the only way to live.

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As always, please read and review to help me improve. Thank you! 

This chapter dedicated to Chevira Lowe who said something about Ino being intriguing. I totally agree!

Edited: Because ff dot net ate some of my spaces (as Chevira eloquently put it) and messed up my punctuation. But it is fixed now! Yay! Also, 'ino' is another word for 'boar' in Japanese (I believe) so when Sakura calls Ino, 'Ino-pig' that's what she means. hugs for reviewing Gavin Gunhold and Chevira! I didn't even have time to go through the edits!


	2. Shino

Why We Fight: Shino

A series of shorts on why our ninjas... are ninjas. Spoilers some of them up to recent manga. I'll put an asterix () in the chapter title when there is one so you can pick and choose. Multi-part fic. Many shorts.

A/N: has decided to eat my spaces and punctuation... I will come back and fix it... never fear!

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Shino fights because he was made for it. When he was three weeks old humanity was sacrificed for it. He never had a choice about accepting the kikkai but he wonders now what life would be like if he had been able to say no. He doesn't resent the bugs, but he finds himself wondering more and more what he would have been like without them. Especially now that he spends so much time with three people and a dog who persist in showing him that life is so much more than the simple linear route he'd previously envisioned it to be.

You are born, you live, you feed your kikkai, your kikkai help you, you fight, you die. A reality simple and elegant and uncomplicated - ideas Shino finds comforting, though he hesitates to use the word. But now, he sees something more. He sees divergence, he sees the future imperfect, and he sees hopes and dreams and other unfamiliar things in his teammates as Kurenai-sensei guides them through their fledgling steps as ninjas of Konoha. And now he wonders about his own inflexibility.

Hinata can change. Kiba can change. He cannot change. His fate was sealed the moment he was born an Aburame.

After three months in their company, fighting and training and learning with them, Shino makes a decision that does not befit the Aburame heir and makes the kikkai in his body buzz angrily at him for days. His own children will not be given to the kikkai. He has learned that much about choice and change and freedom from Kurenai-sensei, Hinata and Kiba and Akamaru. And he watches them always to see what else he might learn from them.

Certainly they are more educational than any Academy classes.

But then, a few days later when Hinata comes to training crying over her father's harsh words, he realizes that depriving his children of their inheritance and their bond to the kikkai... that's just the same as forcing the bugs on them. It's making a choice they should be allowed to make for themselves. Its catch 22.

Shino does not confuse easily, but - wonders never cease - it has happened. So he just reminds himself of why he fights and everything becomes linear again, though perhaps the line he can envision is a little shorter than it once was.

Shino fights because he has bugs to feed and a sensei and two teammates to watch and there's nothing he can do to change it.

He's not all that certain he would if he could anyway.

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As always please criticique if you feel like it!

This chapter dedicated to my ant-farm.


	3. Asuma

Why We Fight: Asuma

A series of shorts on why our ninjas... are ninjas. Spoilers some of them up to recent manga. I'll put an asterix () in the chapter title when there is one so you can pick and choose. Multi-part fic. Many shorts.

Warning: a one instance of severe language in here.

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Asuma fights because not only is he good at it, he enjoys it. The adrenaline rush, the anticipation, the blows connecting, the hum of his chakra along his signature blades. The half-grin on his face as he slashes out with his knuckle-knives is the best expression his face knows how to hold.

He doesn't parade it, but Asuma loves the fact that he's good enough to be considered an elite Jounin - particularly since he's managed it without enduring the major mindfuck trauma that seems to characterize the rest of them. Sure, he fought through the war, and yeah, he lost people he loves, and he's not immune to bouts of melancholy and pain same as anybody else. A ninja's life is hard, but its his and he can take the blows that come with it cos he's got a level head and two good legs to stand on. He's also got the ability to still go home and see his family, drag his friends out for a drink, and hang out like a normal guy. He knows he's lucky to be able to do that, but he sure as hell doesn't begrudge himself that much because he fought for that right and he always will. It's why he fights too.

Because of all that, Asuma is the kind of ninja Konoha was meant to produce - level-headed, loyal, lethal, and able to live like a human and a ninja without too much trouble in the conversion. And Asuma knows it. It just strikes him as strange and a little worrying that so few of his colleagues share the title; some like Kakashi and Anko have been traumatized so badly it amazes him that they can walk around like normal people.

Oh yeah - they can't.

But Asuma can still sit and play a lazy game of Shougi with Shikamaru, tease Ino about what article is sooo riveting in that girlie magazine she can't look away from, and sigh with a funny satisfaction as he watches Chouji pack away another week's worth of _his _wages in barbeque pork. And he lets his students be normal people too. The kids screw up because of that sometimes, and it worries him a little (okay, alot) but he understands that they're kids and kids make mistakes and have the right to a life - it's what he spent his early years fighting a war for and he'll be damned if he takes it away from them.

He's a normal guy, for the most part. And these are by a million miles the most normal of the kids to come out of this graduating class. Everyone underestimates them, like they tend to underestimate him, and that suits Asuma just fine. After all, ninjas are supposed to be surprising and isn't everybody surprised that Ino boldly led her team into battle against Orochimaru's homicidal minions in the Forest of Death for the sake of Team 7? Isn't everyone amazed that Shikamaru was the only one out of over a hundred applicants to be promoted to Chuunin rank? Isn't everybody shocked to the core that Chouji managed to kill a man that not even ANBU could touch during the invasion in single combat?

Yes, they are, but Asuma isn't because he knows these kids are like him. And just because he's not prodigal, not from a famous family or possessing a kenkei gekkai, not genius crazy either for damn sure; doesn't mean he can't serve and protect Konoha and excell doing it. So now as Asuma watches Ino battle it out with Hyuuga Neji (whose uber-genius, Byuukugan-wielding, elitist ass she is kicking, if he doesn't say so himself) in the semi-finals of her second Chuunin exam, he can't keep that same half-grin he gets when he fights off his face. He supposes that's because when his team fights, a part of him is fighting too, and it looks like he's managed to teach these three unaspiring, unpromising and underachieving kids some of why its worth the fight.

Because Konoha's the only ninja village in the world that let's its ninjas, it's _raison d'etre _try to be human too. And maybe not everybody makes it, maybe not everybody can, but for those who can -people like Team 10 and like Asuma- if that's not worth fighting for, nothing is.

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This chapter dedicated to the unaspiring, unpromising, underachieving people who decide to never let that hold them down. 


	4. Iruka

Why We Fight: Iruka

A series of shorts on why our ninjas... are ninjas. Spoilers some of them up to recent manga. I'll put an asterix () in the chapter title when there is one so you can pick and choose. Multi-part fic. Many shorts.

* * *

Iruka fights because his parents fought and he wants to do them proud. He was born to a ninja family and he'll follow in their footsteps like he knows he's meant to. It's how things are in Konoha - circular paths, spirals of destiny and intent that this place can't help but foster - and Iruka loves his village so he'll walk his circle and do his part. He's got no problem being a few footprints on a well trod path, history has to come from somewhere, and its his favorite subject to teach the kids at school.

To be fair, there have been obstacles in the way of that path and he's got his share of trauma, of loss and needs that will never be filled. But, Iruka is nothing if not pragmatic and he knows that he's got it in him to become a true shinobi of Konoha - it's what he was born to be. It's what is expected of him. It's what he expects of himself, and he's comforted by the fact that if he's so much like his parents - if he walks the path set for him - then he's beside them in a way. Keeping them and what they fought for alive in himself.

Then he met Uzumaki Naruto and everything was shot to hell. He was twenty years old and Naruto was seven. Iruka was a respectable, capable shinobi from a long line of solidly predictable ninjas. Naruto was the vessel for the Kyuubi and about as unreliable, unpredicable and unwelcome as the demon itself. He caused trouble, raised hell, and was outrageously disrespectful in newer and more enthusiastic ways each week.

It didn't take long for Iruka to stop seeing the Kyuubi and start seeing himself in the way Naruto behaved and the realization made up his mind to try and get Naruto through the Academy - help him somehow, even if all he could do was dicipline him and yell at him and try, haltingly, to look after him. There had been nobody to do that for him when he was orphaned, and alone, and desperately trying to make the world remember that he existed, and Iruka wouldn't stomach the same failure again. No matter who it was directed at and no matter how much it hurt him to have to change how he lived his life.

Oh he'd gotten grief at the start, children had been pulled from his classes because their parents didn't want them being influenced by that quasi-traitorous lunatic who chose to spend time with the demon-fox. There was even talk of him losing his job until Sandaime-sama had gotten involved and, well people had lost their jobs but none of them were him.

And it hurts to admit it, but Iruka knows his parents would disown him if they knew.

But still he looks after Naruto anyway because to hell with the rest of them, he thinks for the first time in his life, Naruto needs a family and so does he. He screws up sometimes, and he's meaner to Naruto than he should be, and once in a while he believes he really is a failure of epic proportions because not only has he shamed his family name and spat on his parents' memory, but he's not even capable of fulfilling this self-assigned suicide mission and giving Naruto the help he needs and deserves.

And then they'll be in detention for the fourth time this week and Naruto will beg for some ramen and all those feelings will die half-felt. Iruka will lecture something about ninja dietary requirements before letting Naruto steal his wallet and run off towards Ichiraku irregardless. Hiding a grin, Iruka will just lecture Naruto sternly once they make it to the ramen parlour and watch the boy roll his bright blue eyes and guzzle his food and grin at him like he's the only person in the world.

Clearly, he doesn't walk his spiral anymore, but Iruka doesn't care as much as he used to. Tradition is important, and so is your place in life, but neither matter as much as the bonds you forge while you're here and living. Iruka has been expected to react a hundred ways, to do a hundred things during his life because that's just who he is - but if he broke the family mould, the village beliefs, for Naruto's sake he's sure as hell not repentant.

Ironically, it turns out Iruka fights to show everybody what you're born isn't all you'll be. And he's winning.

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I'm not as fond of this chapter as I am of the others... if you can see where I went wrong, please let me know.

written for people who break the mould, there aren't enough.

and thank you to all my readers and reviewers for this thus far! I'm so glad you're enjoying it! As for Asuma-Kurenai requests? I've never thought about that before, maybe I could try, but don't expect anything for a while: )


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